Page:The Story of India (1897).djvu/15

Rh searching for a miraculous child, with milk instead of blood in his veins, who will overthrow British rule—as Herod sought for the infant Christ. Small-pox is cured, the ignorant natives think, by taking the "crusts" formed by the disease and exposing them at the cross-roads; and cholera is supposed to be carried from village to village by a scapegoat. In some parts of the country every family boasts of a witch; and men commit suicide in order that their ghosts may avenge imaginary wrongs.

What is to be the future of these people, and what part are we to take in that future? These are the great questions the British public will have to answer. Fortunately for us, the life of the East moves slowly, and we are not driven to solve the problem in a day; but a traveller does not wait till his journey is half done before asking himself where he is going.

Split up as they are by the barriers of blood, of sect, of social custom, and of distance, it is hard to imagine the peoples of India welded into a nation till centuries have gone by. To suggest that the natives of India should now be left to govern themselves would show an ignorance equal to their own. We might as well dress them in tall hats and trousers and expect them to be comfortable as equip them with a Parliamentary Franchise and expect them to show the political energy and intelligence